I've been sick of it for a while, but it has been in the news quite a lot recently. Climate change scientists being consulted by climate change ministers to combat climate change skeptics... the whole thing is a bunch of crap.
Newsflash to the media and the entire Western civilisation:
Climate change is not the only environmental issue there is. It probably isn't the biggest environmental issue, or if it is, it doesn't mean we can ignore the others. Sometimes I feel like building a machine that removes 1 kg of carbon from the atmosphere while dumping 1 kg of mercury into a nearby river system. The way people talk about the environment, it seems like people would think that's a good thing.
As for climate change skeptics, just shut the fuck up. I don't know whether anthropomorphic global warming exists. I don't care. It is irrelevant. If we act like it is, we will take measures to reduce wasteful consumption of energy, stop dumping our shit into the atmosphere (which, even if it creates no global effects, will produce local ones - ever hear of acid rain, for example?) and generally try to clean up our act. These are good things.
And hey, if you are right about the global temperatures being linked to solar activity you WILL BE PROVEN RIGHT. But if you are right, it will be a disaster to environmental movements worldwide - if AGW turns out to be wrong, the obsessions of everyone over the past decade or so will be seen as a waste. Which is wrong, for reasons I have already said.
If the environmental movements are to produce any real results, they need to stop framing every. single. discussion. around global warming. If it turns out to be false, they lose. If they are right but we reverse global warming, they lose - Y2K would have produced problems had it not been fixed, but people felt annoyed about being led to believe disaster was guaranteed. If global warming is true and it hits us hard, the best they can do is say "I told you so".
Focus on green energy. Focus on stabilising the population. Focus on increasing the efficiency of agricultural and manufacturing techniques. Create awareness of real issues on a local level. Do these things and the environmental movement will actually, amazingly, achieve something apart from preaching and soothsaying. Stick to the current cult-like obsession with greenhouse gases, carbon footprints, melting icecaps and the like and the movement will, inevitably, collapse.
By the way, a scientist saying that it is a "travesty" that they can't account for certain patterns means there is a flaw in the model being used, not the whole theory. That entire leaked email "scandal" was a huge load of crap, but hey, at this point in my life why should I expect people in the media to be scientifically literate, objective or rational?